I know there were a couple of you interested in Terraria, so in case you stopped following it or didn't notice, Terraria will be available on steam on the 16th of May, and will cost 9.99$ (at least for the first week).

I'm not sure if I'll get it because:
1) It's on Steam.
2) I've seen almost all of the game content on PBat's + the developers' LP on Youtube :X

And what is the problem with Steam?

Too much moisture is bad for electronics.

DRM. Ridiculously expensive DRM, to boot.

Oh noooo, sooo scarryyyy; we actually have to sometimes pay for things we want.

So you enjoy paying a 40% overprice for a clunky, buggy, and completely unnecessary DRM system?

Prices are standard retail, except during Steam sales which are very often. Doesn't feel clunky; subjective. I've never had any problems with buggy ownership. All content is tied to my account, not the hardware.

Steam is great

Where I live, (Australia), steam prices are typically less than retail prices. I've never had problems with the steam DRM system. It has always worked first time every time online and offline, whenever I want to play. The "unnecessary" claim is highly questionable too, do you think piracy doesn't exist, or isn't a problem?

The only thing I don't like about Steam is that sometimes it starts automatically downloading an update for a game that I want to play right away.

My experience with steam matches Karadoc's. The larger Australian ISP have access to Australian steam servers that we generally don't have to pay for the downloads associated with it.

When you live in the EU and they decide that 1 euro = 1 usd and you end up paying $99 for a game that costs $70 usd everywhere else, (giving a 30% markup). I would be raged and refuse to use steam too.

Look on the bright side: that markup goes straight to reinforcing the EU's economy for next time.

... I think.

[EDIT]
Unless Steam themselves do the conversion using particularly stingy exchange rates, in which case I agree.

This:

Especially one that relies on the good fortune of someone else's servers and their temperaments, one that can force you to update your game even if you don't want to, one that installs your games wherever it wants.
Feel free to come up with more ways that Steam knows how to annoy you.

This is also damn annoying. Luckily they apparently charge USD, but MMOs for example (been a long while since I played one of those) usually pull that shit off.

I'd probably cave in and get it anyway, but I'll do it begrudgingly

You can play in offline mode.

You can configure if you want automatic updates, on a per game basis.

It installs all the games inside the Steam folder.

I don't mind Steam itself, but I do mind their prices. That's why I only buy throuth them some indie games (specially when there's a discount). Other than that I buy retail since it's cheaper and I get a physical copy (importing from UK is nice too ).

Steam is a program, it goes in Program Files. (C:\Program Files\)
Terraria is a game, it goes in Games. (D:\Games\)

No it doesn't.

Some games run their own installer.

For me Steam is a gaming platform, so it goes in D:\Juegos (games in Spanish) . But I agree that having the option to install to a custom folder woudl be nice.

I've never come across a game that does that (and I have 50+ games in Steam). Even Eve Online, which doesn't use Steam for anything (not even for DRM, and you can launch it without needing to launch Steam) installs inside Steam.

For me:

• Steam is usually the same price or (more often) cheaper than retail.

• Saves me the trouble of swapping disks and slowly copying each game to the hard drive. While the network is probably slower, it is automated.

• Grants me easy access to games on multiple computers, and offers a network to keep track of game saves and friends, etc.

• Secures the games somewhat in a friendly manner so that game developers can feel safe without forcing abusive protection on me (though some still do ).

Steam is great. I love it. The only annoyance that comes to mind is that I can't pin some games to the start menu or task bar, but that feels like a Microsoft Windows failure; not Steam's.

I believe Steam does have the second best DRM I have ever seen. Telltale's model I like better though. Main issue I have with Steam is you can get in a catch 22 with the off-line mode. Happened to me at least once.

To be honest I haven't use steam, but I thought when you said that steam is bad, you had more important stuff to mention... Being a Indi game developer the more open markets out there the better..

I would like to know the process of uploading a game to the steam, since they have only a contact page... Well, that it's what I saw someday...

Yes that's nothing, I have never understood why the hell a Mac Mini in the US cost 699$ and in the EU cost 699€.

699€ are ~975$... With what I buy a Mac Mini here I could buy a MacBook Air in the US.

And all the prices are the same int the AppStore...

Can someone explain me that?

You don't just upload a game to Steam. VALVe is basically a publisher with Steam. You have to make an agreement with VALVe.

Steam DRM does not seem that bad compared to the DRM in some other AAA games. I've only been bitten by it twice (once was when Half-Life 2 came out and their authentication server went down) and once a couple of months ago when I was not able to play a game in offline mode (my internet connection was down).

The biggest problem I usually face is that I always forget my damn password since I always have the client auto-remember it...

Apparently Terraria should be release sometime around 2:00PM EST...

I said it was a consideration against purchasing the game, and it is.
You know what works better IMO? The way the humble indie bundle is distributed. (and I don't mean the pay what you want thing)

Also, game is available: http://store.steampowered.com/app/105600/

Most Humble games have the option of being distributed over Steam and that's how I opt to get them in Windows. Otherwise, it's just a simple hash that gets you unlimited access to the downloads. I don't think that technique would be sufficient to deter piracy of big publisher games.

Yep, won't be getting it.

DRM does not lower the rate of piracy. In fact, having DRM, makes it more likely that your game WILL be pirated -- sometimes by would-be buyers who just don't want to put up with it.

The article they link to is far more informative. Once nice quote being

This is also an interesting view on things (and it also links to the 1000:1 article)

I just used the regular download link and found it much simpler

DRM isn't intended to prevent piracy. It's intended to prevent first-day piracy because apparently most sales are first day. That is, if you can't pirate it first day, but really want to play it ASAP, then you just might buy it instead of pirating it.

The effectiveness or ineffectiveness is nearly impossible to truly measure. You can't compare indie game success with major game publishers. There are a lot of variables that can affect the sales. For example, big publishers are viewed as big, bad, rich corporations (i.e., your lost sale "won't hurt them") and indie shops are seen as the guy next door that is struggling to survive (i.e., needs every sale). The big publishers are also spending a LOT more on games than indie shops can likely afford (hundreds of millions), which means they need to recover much more money.

In any case, Steam's form of DRM is pretty painless most of the time. Some people will always get stung, but it's a pretty good compromise.

I buy almost all my games via steam or impulse. I loathe discs, and much rather trust that they don't go bankrupt than that I wont ruin or lose the discs. The prices vary quite a bit (compared to stores), but since I tend to stay away from "AAA" titles (with some notable exceptions) it's not that bad. There are also loads of games on steam that I couldn't get in a store or other digital medium.

Never really had problems with the DRM. The only game I can think of that's been hassling me is Dawn of war 2, which disconnects multiplayer sessions if you lose connection with steam (which is a fault in the game I'd say, since no other games does that). It's a good middle ground imo.

I also actually use and enjoy the extra steam features like achievements, "join friend", in-game overlay chat, screenshot system etc.

My only real gripe is that it for some reason stops downloading games as soon as I start up a steam game If I want to play an MP game, I'll stop the download myself thanks.

Their "exchange rate" is deciding that if you live in Europe, you pay in Euros, and the numerical value of the price is the same - i.e. 1 EUR == 1 USD. Which is a price hike of 42%.

Indeed!

There. Fixed that for you.

Yeah, a buggy, crash-prone program that's so ridiculously heavyweight that it takes longer to start than my bloody operating system, that does god knows what behind your back, and forces you to be online to play your games even if they're completely single-player^[1] is completely painless...

I play all my steam games with no net connection(single player, of course)

That's not Steam fault though. Publishers/game studios are the ones that set the prices (and in general the Steam price is the same as the retail price, at least here). Not all do the 1$ = 1€, but certainly that's not a Steam thing (it happens with hardware too, for example: if a GPU costs 250$, it's going to cost 250€ here).

That's not true. If you launch Steam while you don't have internet connection, it asks you if you want to enter offline mode.

Of which, it tries to go online so you can go offline... That's the catch 22 I was talking about.

The fuck it isn't! It applies to Steam and Steam only, and it's been a completely deliberate Valve policy since the beginning.

Apparently, your retail market is broken then. Here, retail prices are roughly the US prices, while Steam prices are the aforementioned greedy asshole ones.

What MiquelFire said. I'm open to the possibility that it might be intended to work some other way, but it's not the way it works in practice. See: it's a buggy piece of crap.

[EDIT]
And since some Steam apologist will no doubt blame my system, this behavior has been consistent across several computers and OS installs.

What I'm saying is that it's not Steam who sets the prices. Go to the Steam forum and inform yourself. Valve for example sets the prices correctly (Portal 2: 45$, it's correctly set at 38€ (45$ = 31€; 31€ + 18% VAT = 38€)).

It really dependes a lot on the game company. Looking at current prices for example: Dirt 3 is cheaper on Steam than on retail, while Fable III has the same price, and Portal 2 is a lot cheaper (the retail price here is set at 50€). [edit] And Brink is more expensive on Steam Oh no, it isn't, I was looking at a "discount".

Get better hardware. Stop purposefully downloading viruses.

Stop having bad luck.

That sucks for you; Steam is a great system. I, nor any of my friends that use Steam, have ever had any major problems with it.

The fuck they do, and the hell it is. 49.99€.
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Well that has to do with the different 3 zones they divide Europe in (IIRC they reduced them to 2 recently). You live in the expensive one . Here it's 37.99€. They set different prices for each of these zones.

[edit]
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WTF? That is messed up.

Is it me or does steam/css combo take just as long to load up and join a game now as it did on my computer back in 2005?

Too bad Dota 2 will be on steam. I love the game but hate Steam. It is the iTunes of the gaming world.

I got the game for free (legally)! The game was $9.99 for a single copy or $29.99 for 4. I chose the 4 copy option, kept one copy for myself and sold the other 3 copies to coworkers (within minutes) for $10 each. My copy was therefore 'free';D

The game itself is quite fun. Who wants to set up a server?

I've never bought from Steam before (it's £5.99 in UK). Is it just a normal installable app which authenticates on startup? I have four computers in the house so wouldn't mind running it on all of them (as I do with minecraft, no concurrency obviously as I'm good), if it's somehow tied to a computer then I won't bother.

I wish that crappy platform was mine... Or in a future be able to release a game on it...

I just found the executable in 'C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\terraria' and ran it fine with no instance of Steam running. So I would say that yes, you should be able to run it on all 4 computers, assuming you launch them all standalone and not through Steam (because I don't think Steam allows your account to be signed in on more than one computer).

Steam games are connected to the Steam user. That user can only be logged in once, AFAIK. So you would need 4 licenses (and 4 users; though perhaps they have a sub-user concept, like PSN?) if you wanted 4 people to play simultaneously, but if you just wanted to be able to play one person at a time from many different computers then Steam makes this easy (especially so if all 4 computers are connected to the Internet).

While you may be able to do it, it's probably against the license terms, and therefore somewhat of a gray area. One license is not the same as four. This is basically just bypassing the Steam DRM, which is basically pirating 3/4 copies. Of course, since this is an indie game, it's possible that the license terms are more lax, but I'm assuming they aren't.

I don't think you would get in any trouble (does not mean it is not violating TOS though) if you purchased one copy of the game, downloaded it and played it at each of the 4 computers (using Steam to download and install of course), and then made shortcuts to the executables directly. Steam would be none the wiser since it would not even be running on any of the computers . It may change in the future though depending on how deeply the developers plan to integrate with Steam but so long as you never update your executables you should be fine.

If you really wanted to play it safe, you could buy a 4-pack using your Steam account, and create 3 other Steam accounts and gift your 3 extra copies to those accounts (it's a bit of a hassle, but I don't see anything about it that would violate the TOS).

The game works great on my laptop (which is now 7 years old!) but the lappy can only handle one instance of the game so I can't host any MP server. Hopefully they release a standalone linux friendly server...

I would only be running it once, but on many computers.

btw, once you've bought the game, is multi-player free? I couldn't find anything useful on how multi-player on steam works or whether you use p2p or central server.

You wouldn't get in any trouble for killing a man if you didn't get caught.

This is basically what Steam is for. It also means that as long as the Steam service continues to run (the foreseeable future) you don't have to worry about losing your games either.

Multi-player has been free in every game I've played on Steam, but I don't know if that's through Steam or though the game studio (or whether it's up to the particular studio). Since this is an indie game I'm going to say that it probably is through Steam and probably free.

Currently, multi-player is not through Steam.

3. Multiplayer Hosting
Hosting a server in the release build will not use steams built in server system, and requires you to port forward and use IP addresses to connect. You CAN start two clients of Terraria at once on a single PC from steam and use one of those to launch your server and the other to launch a client. However, it is not possible to use ONE steam account to launch a server on one PC and a client on another PC at this time, as steam will think two users are using the same account at two separate locations, which is not allowed. Also, until the stand alone servers are usable, the limit of 8 players per server will remain intact.
What you can Expect : We will be creating a stand alone server launcher within the next few weeks. And we will be integrating steams Server lists and removing the cap of 8 players per server. ^[1]

Edit:

Speaking of that... make sure to bring thick acid proof gloves when you drop by this weekend. I err need your help disposing something

So much for Steam and the games on it. After a few 'sorry the servers are busy you cannot download anything now' messages I downloaded a demo game and got this

Description:
Stopped working

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Dwarfs.exe
Application Version: 0.6.5.0
Application Timestamp: 4dcc4b27
Fault Module Name: KERNELBASE.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7600.16385
Fault Module Timestamp: 4a5bdaae
Exception Code: e0434f4d
Exception Offset: 00009617
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 2057

I bought Terraria last night. So far I'm not overly impressed. I would have liked some sort of in-game tutorial to guide you. There is apparently a guide NPC there in single player, but he doesn't seem to interact with you at all. I was pretty lost so I just fumbled around a bit. Managed to kill some green blobs, but eventually died too. I deleted my first world and generated a second. This time I did a bit better, figured out crafting, but still managed to not have very much fun. I imagine that it will be much more fun to play with friends online though.

OK.

That's not necessarily Steam's fault. That's probably the developers' fault. That's the risk you take when you purchase an indie game (the developers have fewer resources to test). That's not to say that you will never have issues with mainstream publisher games either. You will occasionally, but it still isn't Steam's fault. You would have had just as much trouble had you purchased the game through another publisher.

Aye, a quick look showed it's an XNA game, so possibly reinstalling .net/xna might do the trick.

I read about the tutorial being lame.

You need to right click on him to talk to him.

I'm finding single player to be tons of fun, but I have a feeling that all the 'Lets Play' videos served as a tutorial for me.

Basically, to start out you need to chop down several trees (the bigger the better). Then you get a crafting table, make a sword, kill a bunch of slimes and make torches using their slime gel. Then you should make a wood house to start... just put your wood directly on the ground to make the floor, craft a door and wooden walls. Next step is to start exploring. Hopefully there is cave nearby where you can venture in and find some easily accessible ores (and stone). If you come across ledges you can't jump over, make wooden platforms and stick em on the ledge.

I'm going to try summoning the 'Eye of Cthulu' tonight with a coworker (who is in the same boat as you as far as progressing through the game). You should join us. It will be fun!

Sounds like fun. I'm there!

Yeah, I ended up buying the game :X
I'm having fun with it, but I agree that the beginning can be a bit annoying, especially if you are having trouble finding ores :\
Steam is still the suck though, I'm getting "Windows cannot find 'bin\SteamService.exe'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again." whenever I run Terraria; The game still runs anyway. (Also, SteamService.exe is indeed in the Steam\Bin\ directory)

^ that's why I tried a free game before parting with any cash

I find the beginning quite a bit harder than Minecraft. Once you find some life crystals and make / get some potions it gets much easier.

What version of Windows are you running? Have you checked the Steam forums?

I tried it before I bought it :X

Win 7 64bit and no. I'd rather play Terraria than put the effort into fixing Steam.

I might buy this in a few weeks, once money starts coming in from my new job.

are you living on the streets or something, it's the cost of a bottle of pop and a packet of crisps

but waiting is a good idea as they're still working on all the bugs and features they didn't get time to add (that, or they're off to Barbados with the cash).

I went grocery shopping yesterday. I have >counts< $3.01 to get me from now until the 31st, when I get my first paycheck from this job.

Don't say that, you make me feel bad

Sell some of your bandwidth to your neighbours.

If you're with AT&T, charge at least $15 per 50GB. Even if you're well under your limit.

So, is anyone here going to host a server? I get the feeling it's more of a multiplayer game, so I'm not buying it unless somebody can host a server.

Currently the only available server is built into the game. Somebody has to log into Steam, start Terraria, and then create a server (which takes over that instance of the game). To connect yourself you then have to launch a second instance of Terraria (which Steam lets you do).

I ran a server instance on my desktop for Samuel Henderson and I. Of course, I don't trust Windows in a DMZ permanently (and unattended) so I'm afraid I won't be hosting one 24 hours a day... If they develop a Linux-compatible server (Mono should be able to run a .NET application sans XNA) then I can probably host it on my VPS, assuming it's headless.

There are public servers, but at least some of them have secret passwords and I'm sure most of them will suffer from griefers or PVP bullying. A private server is preferred.

IIRC servers are limited to like 5 people, so that's why only a private server is feasible in the first place :X
I'd host one if I could, but my internet connection setup prevents me from doing so.

Some things look like they are a bit easier in a group, but some things are more fun singleplayer (like no fighting for items/ores).

Never heard of it until I looked at the trailer just now. Sooooo .... 2D MineCraft with better combat, essentially?

Not really. Terraria feels more like a game one can win, rather than just play.

I beat it a few hours ago.

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate thread for this comment.

So what do you meant by "beat"?

Not really, since the world building aspect is much less important, try watching the developers' Lets Play, or PBat's Lets Play.

The worlds are not infinite (generated on creation) and building is so much less valuable and worthwhile in Terraria it may as well not exist other than making NPC houses.

I've maxed out my gear, played through all content, fully explored a small, medium, and large map, so I've beaten the game.

In minecraft, exploration and building is the game, so in an infinite world is has a very high replay value. Terraria's worlds are actually quite small, so there isn't really much exploration. Even if there were, since gear doesn't degrade, there would be absolutely no challenge in it.

Not to say it wasn't the best game I've ever played--I played it for almost three days solid--but it certainly feels like it can be beaten. It isn't at all the "create your own fun" game Minecraft is.

That being said. If we could get a server up and have to opposing teams doing PVP, I would be VERY interested. I can see a reason to build in Terraria when someone else is trying to tear it down.

Hey guys, you still losing the time talking about steam and bla bla bla while...

Not bad at all, eh?